The Blood of Heaven (54 page)

The younger Lafitte, related Stephen, seems flightier. I believe the elder brother, Pierre, is the brains of the operation. But Jean is the captain, knows the waters well. And he’s not afraid to take on a Spanish ship on its way to Pensacola. Despises them, so you’ll have that in common. He’s had a hell of a time finding what to do with the niggers he picks up as it is. Pierre says to throw them overboard. But Jean has been selling a few here and there, though he says he mostly leaves them on the boat, as they make troublesome cargo.

But he agreed to do the shipping, I said.

Yes, yes, said White. But I’m afraid it will be catch-as-catch-can for the most part. We laid out a plan for a trial engagement in early May, so we can catch the tail-end of the selling season. He’ll test the waters on the islands, see how many he can get at a chance. So you’ll have to be in Berwick’s by then. See how we do without the full force of the law upon our backs.

And the fencer is another Frenchman?

Lamarque, he said. Owns two pens. He offered to secure us papers in advance, but I’ll do that job myself.

Good, I said. We’re cutting our percentages as it is.

Only at first. Monsieur Lamarque has agreed to a sliding scale. After the first year of sales, we begin to take a majority of the profits. Minus upkeep, et cetera.

Too many Frenchmen, I said. Couldn’t there have been an American for you?

Americans, said White, cleave a bit too closely to the law for our purposes.

It’s a long time until the prices should rise.

Only half a season, he said. From September to December of next year. And by then we’ll be masters of the trade. We’ll be like magicians, moving them unseen wherever we wish.

All this on my mind as the anniversary of the Savior’s birth dawned, but there was no use in talking of it to Red Kate, lost lately to sorrow and rage, giving damning glances whenever I spoke of the prospect of our future fortune as Christmas Day shone through the windows.

And how do you think you’ll find the time for Colonel Burr’s war, she said, with all this business?

I was parting the curtains to look outside, see the people milling, congratulating each other on the day. Good tidings. Comfort and joy. I told her it would come by and by.

Christ, said my wife. All the stinking guns and shot and bloody men on our doorstep—only to end up a nigger-dealer.

Is there something wrong with that? I said. With making a way in the world? It’s paid so far for all this. Or would you rather a shack in the woods? Or the cabin in Pinckneyville?

There’s nothing wrong with it, she said, rasping now, her face contorted into a kind of smile. But I have paid, and you have paid—for all of this. Not nigger-flesh, Angel, but by our own.

There stood my wife, who I’d bought from a brothel at the age of fourteen, myself not much older. Who’d endured childbirth and war and kidnapping and intrigue, my blindness and our child’s death. And it would’ve been less terrible to look on her then if she had aged. But she hadn’t, not so that it showed. Outwardly she looked a girl, a rough-country one with her spatter of freckles, broad face, boxer’s nose, but a girl nonetheless. Inwards, though, she was a nest of dry and winter-bitten briars, her hopes impaled upon brittle tines.

It doesn’t matter, she said. Not a bit. Go on and make a fortune. Build me a mansion in a swamp. Build it out of bones. We used to joke, remember, about me being a queen in the new country? So now I’ll be queen of the dead.

In the street below the citizens were nibbling their sweets; wise-man, camel, mother, father, child—all devoured.

Rejoined, Renewed

And so it was, as the old year came to an end and the new took hold like a skeleton fist, that the dead, or those who might as well have been, were rising. It was the start of the second week of January, Sunday, the Lord’s Day, and I was standing in the Natchez square with Samuel when a rider came to the government house, crying out that Aaron Burr was landed in Vicksburg with his army.

I looked to my brother and said, You came just in time.

That morning one of the hotel slaves had come knocking at our door, saying we had visitors awaiting in the lobby. I followed him down. And in the morning bustle of footmen and Negroes bearing trays of breakfast were Samuel and the widow Randolph, standing beside a pair of trunks. His color had turned to a deeper green, purpling at the edges of his features. He hadn’t had time to apply his powder since he’d returned, not a day before. He’d come alone to Natchez, having left Reuben in Washington some two months past, left his brother to pursue the vendetta alone. Because of this, Aliza had thrown the widow and him out. Before they’d been able to get their things out of The Church, the mistress had taken up a crop and began thrashing them both, screaming. I could see the tattered places in the widow’s dresses where the crop had struck her bare, pale arms. Samuel was holding one at the elbow, gently, as though to steady her.

Without thinking, I embraced him.

Brother, he said, letting me go, we have much to discuss.

Samuel made to send Polly Randolph up to our rooms along with the trunks. I stopped him, told him to get his own, and that it was best, Polly, to leave my wife alone. He smarted for a moment, then I said, My son is dead.

The widow Randolph began to cry. She looked away from me, was bumped by a slave carrying an urn of coffee, yelped, the madness of her time shut in with Aliza having overtaken what little sense she’d had before. I could’ve struck her. I wanted no tears. Then I saw Samuel too was weeping. I left them there, went to the valet and arranged for a room. While I waited at the desk, my brother came behind me. The tears which ran along his corpse-colored features had the look of pus.

Wipe your damned face, I said.

Into the street and chilling wind we went, him leaving Polly to attend to their rooms. He told me of the president, of Reuben’s foolish obsession; he said he’d been a fool to follow him all that long way. With some satisfaction I said he would’ve done no more good here. And these words brought him back to the matter of my dead son.

I’m sorry, he said. God, I am so sorry.

We walked the square, past the government house, turning at the English Church, making the same tread over and again.

He said, in the tones of our boyhood, of a Chit funeral: The Lord does not cast off forever. But though He causes grief, yet He will have compassion according to His mercies. For He does not willingly afflict the children of men.

O, put it away, I said. I’ve heard enough of scripture babble to last a lifetime. I’m through with it.

Samuel stopped. I thought it might help, he said. I’ve been thinking on the Bible lately. Had time to on the way back.

And did he want me to proffer him some verse, a balm to soothe his conscience for leaving his mad brother to rail in the streets of the capital? Or were there some other sins?

There is no balm, I said.

Samuel looked to me, a dull giant peering down for meaning. God Himself would’ve had no better visage reproduced, as He is, in the images of men. He bent over me, his necklace of tiger’s teeth spilling out from his coat, reached out a hand and tapped the Bible at my breast, where he knew it would be.

There, he said, you must still believe a little.

I’d felt his finger-tap through the pages of the book, thudding at my heart. I did still wear it, but now not even like a tumor. I said to my brother: Belief’s nothing. I wear it like you do your tiger’s teeth. In remembrance of something I’ve killed.

Samuel shuddered, and we walked on. As we rounded the same landmarks, he talked of his journey, of Reuben and how he’d forsaken him—though rightly, he said. For he couldn’t bear another day of him, of his plans for Senator Smith. Before the end, Reuben had been trying to find a way to address the congress, was drafting out speeches. Samuel said his brother hadn’t even looked up from his desk when he’d left.

He was going on about it all as we turned the corner at the government house and came upon a gathering crowd, above which sat a rider bellowing about Burr, Vicksburg, an army. I felt as in those moments when you’re riding through a storm in open country and all around you lightning is touching down in electric slashes, and the hair stands upon your neck and arms and your throat grows clenched, awaiting the strike which will be surely aimed for you. Speed the horse and hurry on.

I listened, hollered over the crowd for the rider to say again. All he knew were those few words. He was the third in a chain of messengers who’d ridden, in twenty-mile stretches, the distance between the towns. By the time it’d gotten to him, the rider before was so whipped as to only give the pertinent details. Fine, I thought. I need no more. I wheeled to Samuel, grinning.

Your faith’s been rewarded, said my brother.

Damn faith, I said. This is something more. And you’re for it now, aren’t you?

Samuel’s shoulders dropped to bear upon them another brother’s hopes. If this is how it goes, he said, I’m with you.

I took his arm and shook him. More and more came to the crowd and the rider’s words were now repeated in yammering chorus. I pulled Samuel through and we made the steps of the government house, came to doors where stood four guards of the Mississippi militia. I told one I needed to see Mister Stephen White, under-secretary to the surveyor general.

Nobody in, said the guard. No admittance till further notice. The governor’s in meeting with his staff.

And even this had joy singing in me as we went back down the steps. The crowd had taken sides, one hollering for the honor of the Union, the other for a gabbled mixture of freedom, land, and Burr. When we walked through them they were about to come to blows; gentlemen throwing down their hats, assaulting the air with their canes, beggars and menials egging them on, switching allegiances as they saw fit.

So, said Samuel as we hurried back to the hotel, will you ride up now and meet him?

No, no, I said. Why kill a horse to go eighty miles when he’s coming down the river soon enough? We’ll meet him at the docks, or ride down and catch him at his next stop.

I guess we will, he said.

Across the street, before the government house, the crowd was in minor riot. We watched the gentlemen fly at one another, shouting oaths and tearing cravats. The militiamen stayed at their posts, four of them to maybe a hundred in the street. They’d marked the odds and so would let the scene play out.

Finally, I said. The time’s at hand.

We were not long in the hotel. Red Kate, unable to stomach my happiness, had sent us off. She still hadn’t seen Polly, and when, in the doorway of our room, she caught sight of Samuel, I thought she’d come scrambling towards us and tear him apart with her hands. I could see them working into claws at her sides.

By evening we’d been sitting in the tavern off the square for some hours, watching the crowds buffet and break at the doorway, men shouldering in to continue their riot in a more peaceable place, where at least there was beer. Toasts to the Union, toasts to its death.

I was nearing drunk, going over the details of supplies, what we’d need for the campaign sure to commence. First things first, I said. You’ll need a horse and kit. How many guns do you have?

A few, said my brother. But won’t we be supplied from Burr’s store? That’s all I heard on my way down was how much money he’d been given by the rich men in Ohio and the ones in Tennessee.

Poor Reuben, I said. He couldn’t see that it was good.

He didn’t care about Burr. So long as Smith was broken.

I believe we’ll tolerate a Smith or two to have our own country and the crushing of the Pukes at last. I must try and convince the colonel of that. First Baton Rouge, then on to Wilkinson’s thousand in New Orleans. Christ, the man’s been such a shit down there they’ll treat us as liberators.

Clark was drafting a pamphlet against him when I left Washington.

Good man, I said. Wait till he hears what the bloated bastard’s been up to now. He’ll have to write a book. In memoriam.

A pair of drinkers were bellowing about tyrants, smashing chamber pots for emphasis against the bar when Stephen White came in. Spotting us, he came on, having to hold a hand over his face to avoid shards of china-ware. He sat and I introduced him to my brother, White taking his hand briefly, looking gray-faced all about.

So, my friend, what’s the news from the government? I said.

Stephen fell into the chair and leaned his head back. Mead had us locked away all damn day, ever since he got the letter from Burr. So the governor, it seems, will be sticking it to Wilkinson. He’ll be the one to accept the surrender, tomorrow.

What surrender? I said.

Burr’s, of course, said White. He landed in Vicksburg yesterday afternoon and it seems someone gave him a newspaper that said how Wilkinson was in New Orleans and would have him hang. Evidently he thought better of it all when his neck was on the line. His letter to Governor Mead came early in the morning—he’ll surrender only to Mississippi authorities, and on the condition that he will not be extradited to Orleans.

I couldn’t speak. Samuel put a hand to my shoulder and we had to duck, for another pot came sailing overhead, smashing against the wall behind us, its contents streaming down the paper. The gentlemen were roaring now; I wanted to join them, to howl.